SH3 Commander: hardcoded UI values?

[RoaldLarsen]

Jason,

Thank you for your reply.

I am sorry if my remarks have caused you to feel that you need to defend your excellent product from unjustified calumnies. That was certainly not my intent.

I would hope that you and other readers would infer from my first, third and fourth questions (espcially the first question being first) that I felt that user error of some form on my part was the most likely cause of the phenomena I described.

Originally Posted by JScones

Then you have an installation problem...

The original install seeemed to run cleanly. Perhaps I have corrupted it somehow with subsequent tweaking. I decided to take your advice and reinstall SH3 Commander.

I uninstalled SH3 Commander (rollback, backed up the changed .ini and Cfg files, ran uninstall, deleted the .ini file) and reinstalled SH3 Commander. I figure this should give me an "out of the box" version of SH3 Commander.

I tested both the display of rank labels in a number of circumstances, and the availability of types of subs to Flotillas over a number of dates, all without first changing any SH3 Commander files.

Unfortunately, the display-of-rank-labels problem remains the same. The behaviour regarding availability of type VIIC subs seems to be fixed. I no longer get the error dialog, and I get the VIIC and other sub types on the dates indicated in "U-boat availability.cfg".

Originally Posted by JScones

It seems that user is incorrectly blaming hammer for breaking nails.

You are right. I was incorrectly blaming the hammer. This is, as you assert, not a matter of hard-coded values in the UI.

I will now attempt to rectify my error by trying to blame the hammer correctly.

Originally Posted by JScones

SH3Cmdr will ALWAYS use the chosen in-game rank labels.

This statement does not seem to be entirely accurate.

The incorrect language for rank labels seems to be a matter of the UI taking values from the file "SilentHunterIII\data\Menu\en_menu.txt" when that file is not in a state that reflects the user's selection of "German" for "SH3 Options"|"Text Settings"|"Rank translations".

This occurs in at least two circumstances:

1) In the event that a user is using English as the text language in SH3, but has selected the use of German rank labels in SH3 Commander, and the user does a rollback, the rank labels displayed in SH3 Commander before SH3 is next launched will not be German unless the user edits SH3's original English menu file to insert German rank labels. This is because the rollback replaces the modified "SilentHunterIII\data\Menu\en_menu.txt", that contains the German ranks, with the original version of the file, that contains English ranks.

2) In the case that a user is using English as the text language in SH3, but has selected the use of German ranks labels in SH3 Commander, the message to replace a crewman does not use the selected German ranks unless the user edits SH3's original English menu file to insert German rank labels. This appears to be because when the user clicks "Launch SH3!" in SH3Cmdr, it rolls back the rank changes to "SilentHunterIII\data\Menu\en_menu.txt", then generates the message, if required, about the need to replace the crewman, then copies the German ranks back to the menu file.

Have I got this right, or am I still off base?

Originally Posted by JScones

... With the above option checked you WILL get a VIIC in 7 Flot as early as Aug 1940, no changes required. SH3Cmdr file settings:

904_Name1=VIIC
904_Month1=8
904_Year1=1940

That is, August 1940. Associated screen shot just to really prove this fact...


No need to change anything.

You are absolutely correct, of course. This worked exactly as you described. I'll do some more testing to see what edits I did to SH3Cmdr's .cfg files to cause the problem.

I had changed the dates in "U-boat availability.cfg" because the ones in the out-of-the box file didn't seem to match with my research of when types became front boats. For instance, I haven't found a reference to a type VIIC operational as a front boat in 7th Flotilla until February, 1941. Perhaps I have missed something. Are the dates in "U-boat availability.cfg" intended to reflect front boat status, or do they include boats undergoing training?

Originally Posted by JScones

Obviously you are not entering correct values.

Well, obviously, the UI cannot let me enter an invalid argument to date encode, as the spin boxes only generate valid dates. I assume, therefore that it is a date being read out of a .cfg file that is causing the problem. Any idea what files it reads dates from? "U-boat availability.cfg" seems like an obvious one. Any others? And is the argument invalid because it is out of a valid range, or because it is incorrectly formatted?

Finally, is there any way to start a career from SH3 Commander on a date prior to September 1, 1939?

Thanks for your help and attention.